We now know when Dolby Vision 2 will arrive, but what about the content?

I’ve written a fair bit about Dolby Vision 2 in the past year. From seeing it demoed at Dolby Live at the Park MGM in Las Vegas, to viewing it at a Philips event, and then having a brief chat about LG about what it thinks the future may hold for the HDR format, it’d be fair to say that there’s plenty of opinions flying about.

But within the next few weeks – and if you have a Hisense 2026 TV – you’ll find out what all the fuss has been about.

Or will you?

Perhaps I’m a pessimist by default but my understanding of Dolby Vision 2 has increased with each event I’ve encountered it at, but the one pressing issue that’s not been fully addressed is how you’ll be able to take advantage of having this fancy new feature on your TV – and in effect, it’s whether there’s anything in Dolby Vision 2 to actually watch.

Dolby Vision 2 is a new format. At first we thought it could be an extension that incorporated Dolby Vision, but in several ways it’s completely brand new offering. While there is some backwards compatibility with Dolby Vision in the sense that Dolby’s sequel can take content mastered in the original format and improve it, Dolby Vision 2 has an appetite for new metadata, and newly mastered content is the only way that features such as the Intensity Slider and Authentic Motion will work as intended.

So while there’s some backwards compatibility, and having seen it action, it does produce a better image – especially with mid-range and more affordable TVs – any customer with interest in picture quality will want the TV they’ve bought to fully unleash the potential performance available. And this is where we run into a slight problem.

Where in the world is Dolby Vision 2?

Much like Carmen Sandiego (famously from San Francisco), Dolby Vision 2 has been somewhat elusive. Dolby has announced that Peacock (in the US) will produce content natively in Dolby Vision 2, though from what’s been mooted, this will be live broadcasts.

CANAL+ will have Dolby Vision 2 content through its streaming service – but CANAL+ is French, and obviously, it’s only available in select countries in Europe (and French overseas territories). And then there’s iQIYI, a Asian-based video on demand service, which I hadn’t heard about partnering with Dolby until the Hisense TV announcement.

While that covers North America, parts of Europe and Asia; it’s not an extensive number of partners, and despite the widespread availability of Dolby Vision, you might have expected more to sign up and be a part of the launch. But the lack of support suggests that many are hesitant or waiting to see what happens with Dolby Vision 2.

Where’s Disney’s support for it? Why haven’t Sky in the UK talked about it? What about HBO Max, which – and I stand to be corrected – broadcast this year’s Champions League final in Dolby Vision?

At this moment, content seems to be a trickle rather than a torrent. If I don’t subscribe to Peacock in the US, will the presence of Dolby Vision 2 make me want to sign up for the service? I think that’s unlikely, since what I’d want is not to pay for another service but hold out for the service that I’m paying for to support it.

It doesn’t help that Dolby Vision itself is viewed as a premium HDR format, so despite its widespread availability on many manufacturers’ TVs, you’ll only experience Dolby Vision if you a) buy a 4K Blu-ray player that supports it and b) subscribe to the premium tiers of streaming services.

It would seem that most people aren’t paying for the 4K HDR tier on many streaming services, a situation I find galling since people have invested in 4K TVs, but it potentially means that their exposure to Dolby Vision is small, and that the appearance of Dolby Vision 2 on the scene is not one that’ll be a difference maker to most buyers unless you’re a customer who’s in the know about these things.

Does anyone want to watch in HDR?

It’s not just Dolby that is in this situation either. We’ve heard even less about Samsung’s HDR10+ Advanced until a press release this week about Prime Video adopting support for the HDR format. That in itself would seem to be something of a blow to Dolby that one of the bigger, global streaming services has opted for its rival first.

Of course, HDR10+ Advanced is free to license; and along with that, Amazon and Samsung have a relationship going back to the formation of the HDR10+ Alliance, but HDR10+ Advanced is currently only available on Samsung TVs – which are still no.1 in market share – and take up of HDR10+ Advanced seems to have been even slower than Dolby Vision 2.

I don’t doubt that Dolby Vision 2 will have a beneficial impact on picture quality, but the TV industry as a whole seems less enthusiastic, which does strike me as a little odd. We’ve not heard much about Dolby Vision 2 from TCL, and we’re still waiting for Philips’ TVs to launch.

Given the TV industry’s move to streaming, now seems to be time to invest in these pipelines and deliver content that produces even better viewing experiences.

But despite bursts of news here and there, it’s rather quiet on the Dolby Vision 2 front and rather than being wrapped up warm watching great-looking HDR programming, I’m feeling the breeze and wondering when we’ll really see Dolby Vision 2.